The present invention relates to human performance training, and particularly, to systems and methods for skills training involving rapid visual and cognitive reactions, for example, rapid sighting, smooth pursuit tracking, object recognition, and reaction skills required for firearms employment.
Firearms are employed for various uses, including for hunting, marksmanship sports, self-defense, police enforcement, and military operations. Traditional firearms training is inherently limited in its ability to deliver quick, high-level advancements in employment skills. Use of live ammunition during training naturally restricts the location, conditions, amount, and types of training that can be safely and economically conducted. Prior art systems and methods for traditional firearms training include live fire training conducted on a traditional shooting range, typically isolated by earthwork berms and using fixed or moving physical targets.
Inherent limitations in traditional firearms training include danger of live fire training; cost of ammunition; lead pollution and cost of lead abatement; firearms preparation and clean up time; time availability of ranges, especially in rifle training; limited multiple target rotation drills; and primitive and cumbersome data collection, analysis, and history of skill such as reaction time and accuracy; and minimal horizontally offset, e.g., 5 degrees, and no elevated targeting (due to bullet trajectory). Such constraints limit the level of rigor, e.g., level of difficulty, with which targets can be provided for engagement, and can also lead to poor firearms engagement habits, for example, keeping eyes focused on a single target and firearms sights, rather than remaining free from a single target and firearm so that other targets and stimuli within a wider field of vision can be perceived.
More recent firearms training systems and methods include target and combat environments using simulation/gaming platforms, for example, including visual displays for targets and firearms having a laser transmitter in place of projectiles; however, such systems typically lack a methodology and systematic approach needed to achieve heightened performance levels associated with sighting, tracking, recognizing, and reacting to targets over those performance levels achieved with traditional training methods and systems, including for rigorous target presentations that can be difficult to engage.